Remember when a digit was a toe?

Flirtatious: See me? Text or IM? Cam on?

Real Mood: Scrambled

Prediction: We will be forced to return to calling fingers and toes fingers and toes.

So a few of you have asked where I've been, and what's up, and why haven't I posted in a week, and is anything wrong, and am I mad at you, and am I working on something big, and did I get hit with a  computer virus? Well, in a word, no!

I did get a virus, but it was of the human variety and I got tired of sneezing over the keyboard.  But I'm back.

This is finals week. It's a week I love because I learn so much from final presentations.  Today I watched and  listened to projects in my Intro class that are kind of freaky. A group working on media convergence got us all up to speed topically on new mixed media developments.  It was their group opinion that we are getting very close to having just about everything we need in our laps. We'll watch MPEG movies in our sunglasses. Everything we could possibly want to say or have said, sing or have sung, read or be read  to any and or everyone will be on our cell phones. (Then I come home and watch a network feature on using cell phones instead of credit cards to buy just about anything in Japan.  Now I'm not talking about calling some company and giving them your credit card number and expiration date.  No, in Japan you just pass your cell phone over a scanner and the deed is done. Word is US Phone companies are in the labs working overtime playing catchup.  Stop the planet. I want to get off.)

To their credit and my jubilation,  the students are clearly worried about what all this digitization is doing to our socialization skills. At least they're thinking about it. I think we are going to have to look up from our laps or we'll go mad. And if we do?  I think it might be fun. I still remember being in my Cardiologist's office and asking him about some new drug I'd heard about.  He picks up his PDA, pushes a few buttons, and then says, "let's let them get a few more trials before we mess with it. It's really new." And then he adds, "Hey look! That new Angelina Jolie movie opens this week. Boy she's hot."

Maybe, just maybe, if we use it and share it right, all this "1984" stuff will heighten our socialization. But I think we're going to have to be thinking about it to make it happen.

We were out playing with my digital camera this afternoon. And I'm thinking, " I can take the digital shots, run home and download them. Then with PhotoShop I can crop them, sharpen the focus, perfect the color balance, and then erase them. Why keep "em? Where's the challenge? 

But then I remember all the shots I've missed with my SLR Camera because I'd run out of film, or light, or lens. I was out of film when a Golden Eagle dropped down ten feet in front of me, wrapped it's talons around a ten foot long snake, and lifted into the air.  I mean I had my camera in my hand. My eye was on the eye piece. All I've got to show for it is the tale I'm telling you now.

 Now I can just shoot to my  "heart's content." I, me, can get  the shot I want, the angle I've been imagining, the light just where I need it. I can actually have my lens say what I want it to say. I could have had 30 shots of that eagle.

That has to be the secret. We've got to keep the human heart in all this stuff. We just have to. And my observation is that so far there are still more students with digital hearts than with heartless digits. I hope it stays that way in their world.

I won't be so serious tommorrow. :)